"We are in intensive discussions with all potential suppliers," Stefan Judisch, chief executive of RWE Supply and Trading, one of the firms behind Nabucco, said in an interview with the Financial Times newspaper. "They need to tell us how much gas is available, and as of when."

Six nations and companies including Germany's RWE and OMV from Austria support Nabucco, which would transport up to 31 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Caspian and Middle Eastern gas to Europe, bypassing Russia, the continent's main supplier.

Consortium members are in talks to secure gas from The Kurdish province in northern Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Judisch said the consortium wanted to reach agreement with all three countries by the end of March.

"Nabucco is all about diversity of supply," he said. "We now need to have concrete commitments of volumes this quarter. Then we can start the open season in the second half to start acquiring rights of way. We would start spending quite a lot of money."

The European Union has identified Nabucco as a key project to diversify Europe's energy imports. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Energy Commissioner Guenter Oettinger recently visited Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to secure gas commitments from the region.

The Kremlin as a response to Nabucco launched South Stream, which would move double the amount of gas per year and is vying for similar customers to Nabucco. Also in the race to link the so-called Southern Corridor to European customers are smaller projects such as the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, the Turkey-Greece-Italy Interconnector or the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Romania Interconnector.

Experts have questioned that there is supply and demand for all those projects, an analysis that has resulted in what the media has termed the "pipeline war."

Ever since a row over gas prices with Ukraine in 2006, the Kremlin has been accused of using its energy reserves as a political pressure tool. The lack of trust has resulted in conflicts over Europe's diversification strategy, with Russia threatening to supply Asia's emerging economies instead.

The problems have intensified as Europe is pushing for renewable energy and in the wake of the financial crisis demand and prices for gas have tumbled.

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